


A Small Flame of Hope

by Saku777



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Gen, Hetalia OC, Historical
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-20 01:27:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13136262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saku777/pseuds/Saku777
Summary: The Philippines reads the words of her now dead son Jose Rizal in the dead of night as the fighting rages on in the struggle for her own freedom. As she  does so she contemplates what his words to her might of meant and how she can make him proud.





	A Small Flame of Hope

**Author's Note:**

  * For [atomically](https://archiveofourown.org/users/atomically/gifts).



> This is a combination Christmas and anniversary fic for Toma with Toma's (excelsorum on tumblr) Philippines oc Amihan, she is simply delightful and after reading Noli Me Tangere I decided to write a fic about her and the book. This is set sometime after Jose Rizal's death and the legalization of the book in 1899 during the Philippines-American war.

She closed the book shut with a loud snap, the pages clashing together the way the armies of her people had done not too long ago and would continue to do for some time in the future. She stared into empty space before her as the light of her candle dimly lit the room around her. She knew she should be asleep, everyone else was after all and the fighting was still ongoing.

America was a formidable opponent, young, brash, and above all powerful. He was hungry and she needed all the strength and energy she could muster. Despite that though she wasn’t able to tear herself away from Noli Me Tangere and from the words written by a now dead hand, one now buried under mounds of her soil. She had been so enraptured by Rizal’s words that she finished the book in the span of a day and now only emptiness and night lay before her.

She quietly began to thumb the pages, feeling the texture of the paper underneath her fingers as if this allowed her to sense his presence once more. However Rizal was long gone, to heaven she hoped, but that was no comfort to her here on earth. She didn’t know how to feel. She didn’t know how to feel, knowing that this, this, was why he had been treated so harshly and why he had forced to go to Dapitian, why he had been incited of rebellion, and ultimately why he had been killed.

He had died for her, to make her better, in his attempts to shed light on her and on her people. But there was shame too and anger at herself. She felt it burning deep within her chest as hot tears slowly spilled out of those nut brown eyes and down plump round cheeks. She sniffed a few times and since no one was there to see rubbed her nose against the sleeve of her white blouse. Then again who could blame her? She was crying for her fallen son once more, crying for her people, herself, and handkerchiefs were terribly had to come by when one was in the middle of fighting. The shame and anger was still burning and present within her, even after having dried her eyes. 

Was she like Maria Clara? Who passively did nothing while others dictated her fate and abused her, who trapped herself in a prison partly of her own making and was left to rot away in a fate worse than death? Was she like Sisa? Who endured abuse after abuse and had everything taken away from her to the point she was useless and barren and dead? Was she like Ibarra? Who for all his idealism and hope had them all shattered and tossed to the wind and who could be at times, hopelessly naive and callous to those suffering? She wanted to be like Elisas, but even he came to nothing as he ended up dead and cold in the ground, though at least he still had hope and something to give to others, life and education. Could she give that to her own children? 

Her heart told her she was like all of them and that Rizal knew this well. It was a stain upon her heart, a reminder she had not been able to fully take care of and provide for her children and a reminder that she had failed to protect them. Even now after Rizal’s death that same story played itself out, she thought to herself, as she remembered Aguinaldo’s actions and how neither Spain nor America had recognized her independence. Instead she had been treated like Maria Clara, sold from one master to another and kept in captivity. 

There was also the tinge of shame due to how she had heard that copies of the book were being smuggled in, even if it was banned.Yet, despite that she never took the chance to try and get a copy. The one she had, she found out years later, Rizal had sent to her and signed himself and had been confiscated by Spain. She only received it recently, years after the fact. Years after he was dead. She wondered if she had failed him in another way, by not trying harder to get her hands on the book and to read his words to her. 

Even if he was pointing out her flaws and faults he did so out of love and out of the desire that she knew she could be better if she had more of a voice, she hoped she could live up to that expectation but she was so unsure. Everything was so unsure and even the book had not ended on a promising note, only a vague hope. However perhaps that was enough to go by. She clenched her small fists and thought if she could win and make America leave, then they would all respect her and realize that yes she was her own nation now, that she did have a voice, and that she was independent. That she didn’t need anyone’s help.

Yes America had gotten rid of Spain, but now he wanted to posses her too. Despite all his talks of freedom and revolution, he didn’t allow the same to her. Now she knew she had to remind him of what he stood for and she had to assert herself and her people by fighting him, by winning and by carving out a place for herself in the world. The time for laying still and keeping quiet was gone, she would be no Maria Clara, not anymore. She would fight alongside her people and bleed out her heart for them in exchange for Filipino freedom. It was what they deserved and perhaps in doing so a new dawn, the dawn Elisas and Rizal failed to see, would arise in her land and shine upon her and her people. She blew out the candle, but the flame of Filipino hope and freedom burned brightly in her heart


End file.
